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en-usTechdirt. Stories about "filmon"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Fri, 13 Nov 2015 09:29:30 PSTFilmOn Loses A Second Case, Meaning That Supreme Court May Get A Second Shot At Aereo DecisionMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151112/18045832804/filmon-loses-second-case-meaning-that-supreme-court-may-get-second-shot-aereo-decision.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151112/18045832804/filmon-loses-second-case-meaning-that-supreme-court-may-get-second-shot-aereo-decision.shtmlwon a case in California. If you don't recall, the service was a sort of fake knock-off of Aereo, enabling streaming broadcast TV service on the internet. Alki David, an eccentric, publicity-hound wealthy guy, had been sued earlier with a similar service, using a different technical infrastructure, and had responded with some ridiculous countersuits. When Aereo hit the scene, and had been carefully vetted by copyright lawyers who believed (strongly) that it was following the letter of the law, David suddenly declared that FilmOn was using the same micro-antenna infrastructure and got sued.

In the early days, Aereo was winning its cases, while FilmOn was losing its cases. It was so ridiculous that I heard conspiracy theories that the Hollywood-connected (he likes to promote the fact that he's acted in some movies) David had actually set up FilmOn as something of a legal foil to Aereo to set precedents in one direction. That's probably too big of a conspiracy theory, but either way, Aereo made it to the Supreme Court and famously lost when the Court made up its weird "looks like a duck" test, saying that Aereo "looked" like a cable TV system, and that Aereo's service was a "public performance" and thus infringing.

After the dust settled, people realized that, based on the Supreme Court ruling, it sounded like an earlier 2nd Circuit appeals court ruling in 2011 over a company named ivi was possibly overturned. ivi offered a similar service, but claimed that it was a cable TV service and just had to pay compulsory Section 111 fees to rebroadcast broadcast television. Aereo and FilmOn both quickly pivoted in their cases to argue that if the Supreme Court said they "looked like" cable, then the ivi ruling was no longer good law, and they, too, should be able to operate just by paying the compulsory licenses. For Aereo, the lower court didn't buy it. It wasn't going that well for FilmOn either, with a NY court actually holding the company in contempt for pushing this argument.

And then there was the California ruling from earlier this year... followed up this week by another loss for FilmOn (found via Eriq Gardner at THResq), this time in DC. The ruling itself is apparently under seal so the exact reasoning is not clear, but it appears that a real circuit split is potentially developing, meaning there's a real chance that, at the very least, the issue of whether or not online streaming services can just pay Section 111 compulsory fees could end up before the court. It would be somewhat ridiculous and hilarious if FilmOn ended up winning that argument, while Aereo (and ivi) got completely shut down. Copyright law can be weird sometimes.

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]]>it-ain't-over-'til-alki-david-singshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20151112/18045832804Wed, 5 Aug 2015 14:12:00 PDTUS Pushing To Kill Any Future Aereo With TPPMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150805/07021431857/us-pushing-to-kill-any-future-aereo-with-tpp.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150805/07021431857/us-pushing-to-kill-any-future-aereo-with-tpp.shtmlin favor of FilmOn, an Aereo-clone, arguing that contrary to what was found in the Aereo case, FilmOn's internet streaming of network TV should be seen as the equivalent of a cable channel. That's important, because it means that the company can just pay Section 111 compulsory fees to the Copyright Office, and then it's free to stream broadcast (network) TV over the internet.

The TV networks are, not surprisingly, appealing this ruling, but they have a friend in the USTR, which is apparently looking to negotiate away this very possibility in the TPP. In the just leaked copyright chapter (from May, before the latest round), there's a provision pitched by the US that would demand no country allow any retransmission of TV on the internet without permission:

If you can't see that, it says:

[US/SG/PE propose: CL/VN/MY/NZ/MX/CA/BN/JP oppose: No Party may permit the retransmission of television signals (whether terrestrial, cable, or satellite) on the Internet without the authorization of the right holder or right holders of the content of the signal [SG oppose: and, if any, of the signal].

Once again, the USTR shows that its purpose in these negotiations appears to be to carry water for the legacy industry and against new and innovative services. How is it helping American industry to oppose new innovative services?

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]]>another-favor-for-hollywoodhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150805/07021431857Fri, 17 Jul 2015 05:31:45 PDTCourt Surprises Everyone: Says Filmon Streaming Service May Be Able To Get Compulsory License To Stream TV OnlineMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150716/16261531666/court-surprises-everyone-says-filmon-streaming-service-may-be-able-to-get-compulsory-license-to-stream-tv-online.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150716/16261531666/court-surprises-everyone-says-filmon-streaming-service-may-be-able-to-get-compulsory-license-to-stream-tv-online.shtmlAereo won and FilmOn lost (often badly). The arguments FilmOn's team made in court were not at all sophisticated and seemed mostly to be daring the judge to rule against them.

Then, after the Supreme Court ruled in the Aereo case using its "looks like a duck test," both companies shifted plans and started arguing that if the Supreme Court was arguing that they were the equivalent of cable TV companies then they should have access to compulsory licenses under Section 111 that allows cable systems to offer local channels so long as they pay a fee to the Copyright Office. In other words, if you're going to call us a duck, then we're going to quack.

In Aereo's case, the court was not impressed. And it looked like the same thing was happening in FilmOn's case as well. In fact, the company was held in contempt as it tried to push this argument forward. In both cases, courts pointed to the ruling against ivi, an earlier online streaming company that based its entire business on leveraging that Section 111 compulstory license. Aereo and FilmOn tried to argue that the Supreme Court's Aereo ruling effectively overruled the ivi ruling. And the courts had rejected this argument.

Until now. In a move incredibly surprising to probably everyone, a court has actually sided with FilmOn, saying that it can make use of Section 111. This is a different case and different court than the one that found FilmOn in contempt last year (Hollywood is suing in a few different places). In this ruling, the judge, George Wu, is well aware of all of the other rulings in Aereo and FilmOn cases... he just disagrees:

... this Court disagrees with the Second Circuit's decision in an analogous case....

In fact, the court argues that the Supreme Court ruling in Aereo actually does support the idea that internet companies qualify for a Section 111 compulsory license, because the Supreme Court keeps pointing back at the Fortnightly Supreme Court ruling, which was the impetus for Congress to change the law concerning cable TV and require the compulsory license. And, based on that, the court thinks that FilmOn has a legitimate argument that its service fits into the same category. Basically, the court says that it can see no reason that "internet" video providers should not qualify for the Section 111 licenses the same way Congress intended cable TV companies to qualify for it. The judge has trouble seeing how suddenly inserting "on the internet" makes things any different.

In finding that ivi's internet streaming service did not qualify for the §111 compulsory license, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's determination that it was unclear whether ivi was a "facility" that receives broadcast signals and makes secondary transmissions, or whether the "internet" qualified as a "communications channel." ... The Second Circuit held that the statutory text was unclear as to whether the defendant operated a "facility" because "it is certainly unclear whether the Internet itself is a facility, as it is neither a physical nor a tangible entity; rather, it is 'a global network of millions of interconnected computers,'" thus, there is "uncertainty as to whether an Internet retransmission service is or utilizes a facility that receives and retransmits television signals.... And the Second Circuit noted that while Congress added "microwave" as an "acceptable communications channel for retransmissions," it had not "included the 'lnternet'" as an acceptable communications channel under § 111.... The Second Circuit did not purport to find any ambiguity in the phrase "or other communications channels," but nonetheless deferred to the Copyright Office's view that it should not be read broadly to include "future unknown services."

But, the court notes, that really doesn't make any sense under the law:

This is all at loggerheads with the thrust of Plaintiffs' prior "technology agnostic" argument in this case. And it is difficult to recognize the ambiguity the Second Circuit saw in the statute, at least as applied to the facts of this case... The "internet" is not the "facility" urged by Defendants here. And it can't be a "facility" for purposes of the § 111 analysis because without Defendants' facilities, the internet does not receive Plaintiffs' public broadcast signal. Thus, the undisputed facts in this case are that the signals are not received by "the internet." They are received by antennas, located in particular buildings wholly within particular states. They are then retransmitted out of those facilities on "wires, cables, microwave, or other communications channels." We know that they are so communicated because Defendants' users received them....

Thus, the nebulous nature of the internet does not seem to bear on whether Defendants operate equipment that "receives signals transmitted or programs broadcast by one or more television broadcast stations," reformats those signals, and then sends them out to the viewing public." .... [T]he Second Circuit's ivi II opinion focuses on the mysterious "ether" (then spelled "either") through which the retransmission is made, but the "facility" that Defendants have control over and operate consists of the "complicated electrical instrumentalities" used for retransmission, which precede "the internet" in Defendants retransmission scheme.

Thus, contrary to the Second Circuit's conclusion, it is unnecessary to turn to the legislative history or the administrative interpretation: "if the intent of Congress is clear and unambiguously expressed by the statutory language at issue, that would be the end of our analysis."...

Basically, the internet is meaningless here under the statute, and based on this court's ruling, ivi, Aereo and FilmOn are likely no different than cable companies (quack, quack!), and thus they should absolutely be able to make use of the § 111 compulsory licenses.

Of course, knowing that this ruling is different than others and the fact that the FCC is rethinking all of this anyway, the court is allowing the case to be immediately appealed. Still, this certainly makes things interesting and, depending on the eventual appeals court ruling, could set up a circuit split. Of course, it could become moot by the FCC, but at the very least it shakes things up in some interesting ways that say that if a company quacks like a cable duck on the internet, perhaps we really should treat it as a cable duck.

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]]>filmon-wins-while-aereo-loseshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150716/16261531666Fri, 25 Jul 2014 18:37:00 PDTCourt Finds Aereo Competitor FilmOn In Contempt For Claiming To Be A Cable ServiceMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140725/12233328007/court-finds-aereo-competitor-filmon-contempt-claiming-to-be-cable-service.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140725/12233328007/court-finds-aereo-competitor-filmon-contempt-claiming-to-be-cable-service.shtmlAlki David had declared itself a "cable service" following the Supreme Court's Aereo ruling -- though we pointed out that anything that FilmOn or Alki David says should be taken with a very large dose of salt. Unlike Aereo, who is trying to follow all of the procedures to make sure that it can be classified as a cable service to pay retransmission fees under Section 111, FilmOn just announced that it was a cable service and kept on streaming. And, not surprisingly, one of the courts that had already ruled against FilmOn has found the company in contempt. It probably did not help that the case was before the very same judge who ruled that ivi couldn't qualify as a cable company.

The judge here... is not happy. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald totally dismisses the idea that the Supreme Court's ruling in Aereo (where it says Aereo is a cable company) actually means that any internet company qualifies for Section 111 compulsory retransmission rates. Basically, we're back to the quantum CATV where it's a cable system for some parts of the law, but not for others.

FilmOn’s second argument is also unavailing because it
hinges on a mischaracterization of the holding in Aereo.
Defendant is correct that, throughout the Aereo opinion, the
Court likened Aereo to a cable company.... But defendant
attaches far too much importance to the Court’s analogizing. A
series of statements that Aereo (and, by extension, FilmOn,
...)
is very similar to a cable system is not the same as a judicial
finding that Aereo and its technological peers are, in fact,
cable companies entitled to retransmission licenses under § 111
of the Copyright Act. Defendant may argue that the Supreme
Court’s language in Aereo implies that FilmOn may be entitled to
a license under § 111, but an implication is not a holding.

Once again, it seems that David's brazen and brash responses to legal setbacks are leading to bad law. It's been suggested more than a few times that David's real role here is to be the buffoonish version of Aereo, basically underminding Aereo's much more sound legal reasoning and arguments at every turn, and that may be true again here. The court slams FilmOn for basically lying to the court in claiming that it didn't mean to stream its content into NY where the injunction from this court blocked it. However, the court points to FilmOn's own press release... which "boasts that defendant's
mini-antenna technology continued to make available to FilmOn
subscribers across the country the local broadcasts of eighteen
major American cities, including New York."

The court, at the very least, points out that Aereo seems to understand how this process works, and has temporarily shut down its operations, but FilmOn just kept streaming. Furthermore, the court points out that, as Aereo is attempting to do, to make use of Section 111, you need to first get a license from the Copyright Office.

FilmOn does not have, and has
never had, a license from the Copyright Office. Indeed,
defendant admits that it did not even apply for a cable license
until July 10, 2014, after plaintiff submitted this order to
show cause -- a fact that undermines any claim by defendant that
it was truly committed to complying with the letter of the law.... Fundamentally, FilmOn cannot choose
to ignore the Injunction merely because it anticipated someday
being able to retransmit plaintiffs’ content legally.

The court then goes on to point out that the Copyright Office itself has said it doesn't think the Supreme Court's ruling has any impact on the ivi ruling and rejected FilmOn's (and Aereo's) request to be granted a license.

Not only is hope no defense to the violation of an
injunction, but defendant’s faith that the Copyright Office
would grant it a cable license was misplaced. On July 23, 2014,
the Copyright Office, citing ivi, expressed its view that
FilmOn, as an internet retransmission service, “falls outside
the scope of the Section 111 license,” and that the Office did
not “see anything in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in
[Aereo] that would alter this conclusion.” ... Thus, not only was FilmOn’s
expectation of a license irrelevant, but it was erroneous as
well. Moreover, even if the Copyright Office had granted a
license to FilmOn, this development would not have excused
defendant’s decision to preemptively stream content in violation
of the Injunction. The Copyright Office’s decision does,
however, provide additional support for our conclusion that
FilmOn’s use of the mini-antenna technology clearly falls within
the ambit of the Injunction, and defendant should be held in
contempt for willfully violating its terms.

The judge also calls out David himself for contempt, and in the end orders FilmOn to pay $10,000 per day for nine days. It calculated the nine days from the day Aereo shut down its service until FilmOn also shut down it's offering. Thus a total of $90,000, but it also says the networks can get attorneys' fees as well, so that could add up.

There are legitimate legal questions about whether or not the ivi ruling is still valid, and whether or not an internet streaming company can qualify for Section 111 retransmission rates. But the last company that should be in court defending that position is FilmOn.

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]]>thumbing-your-nose-not-such-a-good-ideahttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140725/12233328007Thu, 10 Jul 2014 08:56:00 PDTAereo: Okay, Fine, If You Say We Look Like A Duck, We'll Quack Like A DuckMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140709/17502827832/aereo-okay-fine-if-you-say-we-look-like-duck-well-quack-like-duck.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140709/17502827832/aereo-okay-fine-if-you-say-we-look-like-duck-well-quack-like-duck.shtmlAereo ruling, I'd been meaning to do a post questioning whether or not the ruling had effectively overturned the ruling in the ivi case from a few years earlier. We had seen some people in our comments point out that, following the Aereo ruling, Aereo had an easy solution: just start paying retransmission fees. Except... that's exactly what ivi had tried to do, and the court had shut them down, using almost the opposite reasoning as the Supreme Court. Specifically, the Second Circuit appeals court (the same that had decided in Aereo's favor) ruled that internet services were not cable companies under the law, and couldn't just pay retrans fees:

Congress did not, however, intend for Section 111's
compulsory license to extend to Internet transmissions.
Indeed, the legislative history indicates that if Congress
had intended to extend Section 111's compulsory license to
Internet retransmissions, it would have done so expressly --
either through the language of Section 111 as it did for microwave
retransmissions or by codifying a separate statutory
provision as it did for satellite carriers. See 17 U.S.C.
§§ 111, 119.

Extending Section 111's compulsory license to Internet
retransmissions, moreover, would not fulfill or further
Congress's statutory purpose. Internet retransmission
services are not seeking to address issues of reception and
remote access to over-the-air television signals. They
provide not a local but a nationwide (arguably
international) service.

Accordingly, we conclude that Congress did not
intend for Section 111's compulsory license to extend to Internet retransmissions.

So, uh, which is it? Aereo has now decided that if the Supreme Court is going to call it a duck for looking like a duck, it's damn well going to quack like a duck too. It has told the lower court that it intends to pay retransmission fees under Section 111, more or less claiming directly that the Supreme Court overruled the ivi ruling. For what it's worth, Aereo's "wacky" (but seriously questionable) "competitor" FilmOn, already made a similar declaration of being a cable company, though as we've learned with FilmOn, you should take almost every claim it makes with a huge grain of salt.

Of course, this is a big problem with the Supreme Court's ruling. By coming up with this wacky "looks like a duck" test, it's encouraging companies like Aereo to use that test in a variety of ways, even though copyright law has never worked that way. Lots of things that "look like" each other face different rules: think of terrestrial radio and internet radio stations. Under the "looks like a duck" test, internet radio stations should be able to declare themselves the same as terrestrial radio stations and stop having to pay performance fees to musicians.

And, of course, the networks themselves don't like Aereo embracing the duck, even though the company is only doing so because of the network's own lawsuit.

On July 1, however, its counsel suggested that Aereo has rethought its entire legal strategy and will raise before this Court a brand new defense based on Section 111 of the Copyright Act. Aereo never before pled (much less litigated) Section 111 as an affirmative defense. Whatever Aereo may say about its rationale for raising it now, it is astonishing for Aereo to contend the Supreme Court’s decision automatically transformed Aereo into a “cable system” under Section 111 given its prior statements to this Court and the Supreme Court.

But it's not Aereo that made that decision. It's pretty clearly the Supreme Court and its stupid "looks like a duck" test. The entertainment industry might want to be careful what it wishes for. It applauded the dreadful looks like a duck test, and now it's freaking out when Aereo actually tries to apply it.

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]]>let's pay uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140709/17502827832Fri, 6 Sep 2013 13:41:12 PDTAs Expected, TV Networks Win Copyright Ruling Against Alki David's Name-Changing TV Streaming ServiceMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130906/02041524425/as-expected-tv-networks-win-copyright-ruling-against-alki-davids-name-changing-tv-streaming-service.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130906/02041524425/as-expected-tv-networks-win-copyright-ruling-against-alki-davids-name-changing-tv-streaming-service.shtmlthis was likely: Alki David, the eccentric rich guy who is being sued for an online TV streaming service with some similarities to Aereo -- whose name he changes (as he himself admits "on a whim") regularly -- has lost in court yet again. The company, which had been known as FilmOn, BarryDriller and Aereokiller, is apparently back to being called FilmOn, except that it's now FilmOn X. As we noted, there are significant differences between Aereo and whatever-the-hell David wants to call his company -- and part of that is that Aereo built its system very carefully with copyright law in mind, and was also quite careful about its legal strategy, with a wider plan for establishing a good legal precedent showing that copyright law shouldn't be different just because the length of a cable is different.

Unfortunately, FilmOn's similar efforts have been sloppy and at times reckless. It's no wonder that Aereo has won all of its court rulings, while David's multi-named offerings have lost all of their court rulings. Earlier, FilmOn (as BarryDriller) had lost in California. The court had held that the ruling only applied in the 9th Circuit, in part because of Aereo's success in the 2nd Circuit. That resulted in the networks suing again in the DC Circuit, where we predicted David would lose, setting yet another bad precedent, and that's exactly what happened. The court basically looks at the rulings in NY and California, and then comes to the same basic conclusion as the California court, more or less accepting the TV networks' argument that even though there's an individual antenna for each user, and each copy is only accessible to that single user account, each stream counts as a "public performance."

This is because copyright law is insane. The only real difference between someone watching a TV show remotely online using an antenna in their own home with a Slingbox and doing what these services do is in where "the box" and "the antenna" are placed. That's it. That means the real difference is merely the length of the wire between the TV and the antenna/recording device. If the cable is long (i.e., the antenna and recording device are at a different location), suddenly, according to these two courts, it's a "public performance." If the cable is short, it's not. That doesn't make any logical sense at all.

The TV networks asked for a nationwide injunction here, and Judge Rosemary Collyer basically gave it to them with the minor exception that it doesn't apply in the 2nd Circuit, given the Aereo rulings. Of course, as pretty much everyone has suspected, this growing "circuit split" almost certainly means that one of these cases will end up before the Supreme Court. I just hope that it gets there with Aereo's legal team, rather than David's. The TV networks, obviously, are hoping for the opposite.

I’m on my yacht in (the) Mediterranean at the moment so they can kiss my hairy Greek ass.

He also claimed that the judge is "in the pockets" of the entertainment industry -- a charge that people throw around way too often.

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]]>bad news, bad precedentshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130906/02041524425Wed, 29 May 2013 15:32:00 PDTTV Broadcasters Sue Alki David's TV Streaming Service Once Again, To Establish More Bad PrecedentsMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130529/01484723236/tv-broadcasters-sue-alki-davids-tv-streaming-service-once-again-to-establish-more-bad-precedents.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130529/01484723236/tv-broadcasters-sue-alki-davids-tv-streaming-service-once-again-to-establish-more-bad-precedents.shtmlridiculous lawsuits partly as a publicity stunt to build up his own brand. Nearly everything he does seems to be focused on the publicity value of it -- such as renaming his online TV streaming service from FilmOn, as it was known, to AereoKiller and BarryDriller to mock Barry Diller's Aereo. And, unfortunately, in this case those stupid publicity stunts may lead to some really bad case law. As many people know, despite David claiming that his service (whatever name you want to call it) was no different than Aereo, it is different. Aereo carefully followed various court rulings that indicated how to set up such a service that doesn't infringe -- and so far it's won the lawsuits filed against it by the TV networks.

"AereoKiller," on the other hand, has been losing badly, such that the service is currently barred in most of the western US. Now the networks figure they might as well go in for the kill and have sued David's AereoKiller yet again, this time in the DC Circuit, to try to get a similar ruling on the east coast. The networks could have sued Aereo itself -- as they've been threatening -- but it seems clear they realize that the case against David is much stronger (perhaps, in part, because David himself seems like a goofball who doesn't take any of this seriously, but also because of the company's own actions).

But, of course, bad cases make bad law, and the AereoKiller case is a bad case. There are a bunch of issues related to the whole thing, and it seems quite likely David will lose -- but that precedent will now be available to be used against Aereo itself (and a variety of other innovative services). The end result could be a disaster, and the TV broadcasters know it, because that's exactly what they want.

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]]>ughhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130529/01484723236Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:09:26 PDTSilly Promotional Stunt Lawsuit Against CBS For 'Profiting From Piracy' DroppedMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110706/13114714988/silly-promotional-stunt-lawsuit-against-cbs-profiting-piracy-dropped.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110706/13114714988/silly-promotional-stunt-lawsuit-against-cbs-profiting-piracy-dropped.shtmlpublicity stunt lawsuit. David's startup was being sued by broadcasters, such as CBS, for trying to retransmit TV channels online. So, David first put together a silly and ridiculous video insisting that the reason CBS was suing him was because it was profiting from piracy and wanted to keep that racket going or something. The crux of the claim was that CBS owns CNET. CNET runs download.com. Limewire was distributed via download.com. Limewire was found guilty of copyright infringement. Thus, CBS profits from piracy. That's a stretch by any imagination, but David took it even further and sued CBS. We noted at the time that the lawsuit seemed unlikely to get very far, and that's definitely the case.

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]]>there-goes-that-planhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110706/13114714988Wed, 4 May 2011 16:06:00 PDTSilly Lawsuit Filed Against CBS Because Subsidiary CNET Offered Limewire For DownloadMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110504/12543914144/silly-lawsuit-filed-against-cbs-because-subsidiary-cnet-offered-limewire-download.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110504/12543914144/silly-lawsuit-filed-against-cbs-because-subsidiary-cnet-offered-limewire-download.shtmlCBS profits from piracy and doesn't want others getting into the game and competing. No, really. You can see the video here:

The logical trainwreck comes from the fact that CBS bought CNET a few years ago, and among CNET's properties is Download.com, which is probably the single most popular place for companies to offer up their software products for download. It's been that way for years. One of the many, many, many software products available to download from Download.com was Limewire, which (as you know) was recently found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement. David's argument is that CBS makes a ton of money from this setup. It doesn't. CBS may make a little bit of money from this, but it's not even a rounding error on CBS's bottom line. This is so far removed from CBS's business it's hard to do more than laugh at the accusations.

However, David has now taken it to another level, and together with some hip hop and R&B artists, is suing CBS for copyright infringement over this same issue. It seems pretty clear that this is a nuisance suit from David, who is upset about the lawsuits against his company -- which seem to have a lot stronger basis in law. I can't see how CBS has liability here. We're not even talking about standard third party liability here. CBS is a fourth or fifth party here, at best. The actual infringement comes from end users. Limewire is the tool they use. CBS's CNET's Download.com is the tool that Limewire uses. To blame CBS for that is a huge stretch. Also, unless I'm missing it, nowhere in the lawsuit filing embedded below do I see what specific copyrights of the plaintiffs CBS is accused of infringing upon...